Deadly Valentines

Almost before the gunsmoke from the St. Valentine s Day Massacre cleared, Chicago police had a suspect: Jack McGurn. They just couldn t find him. McGurn, whose real name was Vincent Gebardi, was Al Capone s chief assassin, a baby-faced Sicilian immigrant and professional killer of professional killers. But two weeks after the murders, police found McGurn and his paramour, Louise May Rolfe, holed up downtown at the Stevens Hotel. Both claimed they were in bed on the morning of the famous shootings, a titillating alibi that grabbed the public s attention and never let go.

"Deadly Valentines" tells one of the most outrageous stories of the 1920s, a twin biography of a couple who defined the extremes and excesses of the Prohibition era in America. McGurn was a prizefighter and the ultimate urban predator and hit man who put the iron in Al Capone s muscle. Rolfe, a beautiful blonde dancer and libertine, was the epitome of fashion, rebellion, and wild abandon in the new jazz subculture. They were the prototypes for decades of gangster literature and cinema, representing a time that has never lost its allure.

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